Meta’s next big AI bet: Manus

PLUS: Design better websites with Cursor’s new editor

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Meta’s AI shopping spree continues — this time with Manus, a fast-rising AI agent startup that could soon power end-to-end automation across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

As the AI race moves past model one-upmanship toward tools that actually get work done, does this signal a more grounded phase of Zuckerberg’s AI strategy, and a broader reset in how Big Tech plans to win the next phase of AI?

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Meta acquires AI agent startup Manus for $2B+

  • SoftBank completes $40B OpenAI investment

  • Design better websites with Cursor’s new editor

  • Satya Nadella: AI to shift from ‘spectacle’ to ‘substance’

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MANUS & META

Image source: Manus

The Rundown: Meta just announced the acquisition of AI agent startup Manus for a reported figure of over $2B, adding a top-performing agentic system and revenue-generating product to its aggressive AI expansion.

The details:

  • Manus offers autonomous agents for tasks like deep research and coding, with the startup crossing $100M in annual revenue just 8 months post-launch.

  • The startup was founded in Beijing in 2022, relocated to Singapore this year, and will now cut all China operations and ownership ties.

  • Manus tops Scale’s RLI benchmark, which measures the ability to handle real-world, valuable work — though scores haven’t been updated since October.

  • Manus CEO Xiao Hong will join Meta’s leadership under COO Javier Olivan, bringing roughly 100 employees with him.

Why it matters: After a period of quiet, Zuck is making another big AI swing. With Manus topping benchmarks running Claude (and after Meta’s own model struggles), the move gives Meta a profitable, production-ready agent platform now, with the option to swap in its new rumored internal systems if they can make the leap to the frontier.

TOGETHER WITH GOFUNDME GIVING FUNDS

The Rundown: The year-end giving deadline is today. Open a free Giving Fund in seconds, get an immediate tax deduction, and decide where to donate later — or invest your fund to grow your impact over time.

With GoFundMe Giving Funds, you can:

  • Contribute cash today for tax benefits

  • Streamline year-end giving with one receipt

  • Support your favorite nonprofits

OPENAI & SOFTBANK

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: SoftBank has reportedly completed its $40B investment in OpenAI, according to CNBC — wiring the final $22B+ last week after months of asset sales and fundraising to pull together the largest single bet on the AI race.

The details:

  • To fund the deal, Masayoshi Son sold SoftBank’s entire $5.8B Nvidia stake, $4.8B of T-Mobile shares, and also slowed his Vision Fund dealmaking.

  • The initial investment in February valued OpenAI at $260B, though recent IPO rumors have pushed potential valuations as high as $1T.

  • OpenAI is also reportedly in talks for additional funding from Amazon, and recently finalized a $1B licensing and investment deal from Disney.

Why it matters: OpenAI and Anthropic are both reportedly eyeing a 2026 IPO in a race to define how public markets value frontier AI. SoftBank’s $40B is a belief that OpenAI gets there first — and that Sam Altman and co. can hold off the competition to continue to be the industry-defining moneymaker that Son loves to bet big on.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to quickly set up and use Cursor’s new visual design editor to refine your frontend design without having to switch back and forth with a design tool like Figma.

Step-by-step:

  1. Open a new project in Cursor with an HTML and CSS file (update required) — ask the Cursor agent to build a simple index.html + styles.css, or use a template

  2. Install the live server extension: hit CMD+Shift+P, search “Open with Live Server,” then copy the URL and paste it into the Cursor browser (CMD+Shift+B)

  3. Toggle on the element selector, click any element to edit properties in the Design pane, or tell the agent what changes you want in the active chat

  4. Hit Apply for the agent to make changes — click “Keep” or “Keep All” to save (agent auto-updates classes so changes apply to all matching elements)

Pro tip: Make sure you’re saving progress with Git as you go. Git will make it easier to roll back any unwanted style changes.

PRESENTED BY BLAND AI

The Rundown: In San Francisco, there’s a company called Bland AI that replaces IVRs with AI voice agents that accurately represent your brand, understand your customers, and resolve calls end-to-end. No phone trees. No hold music. Just faster, smarter customer conversations.

Here’s what CIOs love about Bland agents:

  • Always on, always improving – agents that learn from every call

  • Built for first-touch resolution – handles complex, multi-step conversations

  • Enterprise-ready control – own your AI while protecting your data

Want to explore for your company? Book a demo today.

2026 OUTLOOK

Image source: Gemini / The Rundown

The Rundown: Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella just shared his 2026 outlook, arguing that AI is entering a phase where we can see between “spectacle” and “substance,” and success will be measured less by model breakthroughs and more by real outcomes.

The details:

  • Nadella said AI is shifting from discovery to diffusion, with capabilities outpacing our ability to turn them into real impact, creating a “model overhang.”

  • He noted that AI should function as scaffolding for human potential, with teams pushing toward a new equilibrium that accounts for AI-equipped colleagues.

  • The next wave of progress, he argued, will come from systems rather than standalone models, with orchestration being the key to real-world value.

  • Nadella also framed AI as a socio-technical test, where societal permission to the tech will be earned only by solving real problems for people and the planet.

Why it matters: As model capabilities continue to accelerate — led by Google and OpenAI, Nadella’s outlook is a breath of fresh air. It shifts the conversation away from raw performance numbers and back to outcomes, grounding AI’s next phase in value for people and the planet rather than another race for capability alone.

QUICK HITS

  • 🤖 Manus - SOTA general AI agent, newly acquired by Meta

  • 🗣️ Chatterbox Turbo - Resemble AI’s fast, expressive, open-source TTS model

  • 🏃‍♂️ Hunyuan Motion 1.0 - Open-source text-to-3D character animation model

  • 📱 MAI-UI - Alibaba’s AI agent to autonomously control smartphone apps

dbt Labs released a new O’Reilly report on building AI applications with governed, discoverable, and AI-ready analytics infrastructure.*

Elon Musk announced that xAI has acquired a building for MACROHARDRR, its third supersized data center, which will increase xAI’s training compute to nearly 2GW.

Zhipu AI launched a $560M share sale in Hong Kong with an estimated $6.6B valuation, with the IPO listing coming on the heels of its GLM-4.7 launch.

Alibaba introduced MAI-UI, an AI agent that can autonomously control smartphone apps and complete multi-step tasks on mobile devices.

Tencent open-sourced Hunyuan Motion 1.0, a 1B parameter model that generates 3D character animations from text prompts for use in games and animation pipelines.

Adobe announced a partnership with AI video startup Runway, bringing its technology and models — including the latest Gen-4.5 release — to the Adobe Firefly AI studio.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Vic V. in the U.K.:

“I needed to create a fairly large workshop program meant to cover six months. I asked ChatGPT to help me build it by feeding in the email conversation between the organizer and me, and the program it came up with saved me hours of slogging through possibilities. It also gave me the marketing tools to help promote the workshops, saving me even more time.”

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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